Emperor Akbar set an example by having an official command write a thorough chronicle of his reign. The result was Abul Fazl's Akbar-Namah or Book of Akbar. Then came Emperor Jahangir, who dictated his own memoirs, known as the Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, hence there was no need to write an official Jahangir-Namah.

Under the order of Aurangzeb, the history of first ten years was written in the form of a namah by Mirza Muhammad Kazim. However, this effort was never completed, and all that remains are the accounts from the emperor’s first decade in power.

Historians claim that Aurangzeb stopped funding the Alamgir namah’s production since his finances worsened, and he was too distracted with the Afghans, Rajputs, and Marathas to devote any time or resources to creating a florid and verbose chronicle of his reign. As a result, there is no official history of his reign that was written while he was alive.

However, its interesting that after his death, his last secretary Inayetullah Khan Kashmiri urged Saqi Musta’d Khan to complete the history of such a significant reign in Mughal History. The work was completed in 1710 and was came to be known as the Maasir-i-Alamgiri. In order to help Musta’d Khan in this massive project, the state's archives were opened to him to use them as sources. The Maasir-i-Alamgiri was initially written in Persian, which was the Empire's most common language. It was composed in chronological order. This text serves as a foundation for comprehending the social, economic, and political aspects of Alamgir's reign. One year of Alamgir's reign is separated into one chapter, for a total of fifty-one chapters.

The text chronicles Aurangzeb's overall mindset, from how he began his reign, like all other Mughal Emperors, by favoring a luxury lifestyle, to how, after a decade, his focus moved to religion. In addition, it provides traces of Aurangzeb's partiality against 'infidels' during his reign. The Maasir-i-Alamgiri narratives are fascinating and contain a variety of events that contribute to Mughal history. During his reign, Alamgir was the first monarch to instigate disorder and turmoil. Many of his actions caused widespread societal schisms and instability. He was preoccupied with propagating Islam, therefore many of his measures were objectionable to people of other faiths.

Although there are other books about Aurangzeb's rule, including primary and secondary sources, the Maasir-i-Alamgiri is significant in its own way because it is the only document that gives complete details about his reign. Other sources, such as the Waqiat-i-Alamgiri, only cover the first five years of his rule. Letters and official orders issued by him are among the other sources. After Aurangzeb's death, Saqi Must'ad Khan expressed his own thoughts on the former’s life and character. He describes him as a very religious and holy person who strives to implement Islamic law in all of his actions. Aurangzeb is regarded as a devout Sunni Muslim who adheres to the teachings of Imam Abu Hanifa.

As the text was composed for the king and his courtly benefactors, it contains a lot of flattery and adulation. However, some claim that no significant element is overlooked, despite the author's lavish praise of the emperor. In certain cases, the Alamgirnamah has supplied the wrong date due to the historian's clerks' carelessness in extracting dates from the waqi'a in the imperial record office for inclusion in his history.

The Maasir-i-Alamgiri is quite difficult to read and is a much drier text. Due to a scarcity of sources from Aurangzeb's reign, a slew of debates has erupted, leaving the emperor's rule and character open to a variety of interpretations.